1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of voice application infrastructure. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for integrating voice applications into a host application system and running the voice applications within the host application system.
2. Background
To reduce cost overheads, organizations have been encouraging automated access to their support systems through utilities such as telephone automation, private data networks, and the Internet. For instance, many organizations seek to reduce the costly staffing of customer service call centers by using telephone automation such as interactive voice response (IVR) systems. As known in the art, an IVR system refers to an automated voice communication system having one or more voice response units (VRUs) which provide callers with voice applications for IVR, a functionality that provides one or more fixed voice menus of options and automatic voice response to callers based upon selections by callers and how each VRU is configured. A caller can correspond with an IVR system by pressing digits on the phone number keypad or speaking designated words or short phrases into the phone. Hence, a host organization can maintain an IVR system to provide callers with needed information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without the need to maintain more costly around-the-clock call service centers staffed with agents.
FIG. 1 depicts a conventional IVR system set-up. As shown in the figure, the IVR functionality sits on a stand-alone platform 20 with proprietary hardware and software for creating, maintaining, and accessing voice applications. For instance, the IVR platform 20 can include a voice application server 8 for maintaining voice applications once they are created and VRUs 6 and 7 for accessing such applications as needed to service callers. In operation, the stand-alone IVR platform 20 can be accessed by a communication carrier 10, which routes incoming calls to the stand-alone IVR system for automated voice communication with the VRUs. When a caller wishes to connect to an agent or customer service representative (CSRs) of the host organization, the VRU 6 or 7 will signal a private branch exchange (PBX) 11 at a designated call service center 30 to switch the call to an automated call distribution server (ACD) 9. The call can be transferred to the ACD 9 via the communication carrier 10 or via a dedicated communication trunk between the stand-alone IVR platform 20 and call service center 30. The ACD 9, is selected by the enterprise's intelligent call router (ICR) (not shown), such as Cisco intelligent contact management (ICMs), which is running a script to choose between multiple possible target ACDs. The ACD then connects the caller to an available agent (15-18 on diagram) for personal voice communication. There are numerous providers that offer stand-alone IVR systems, such as, Telera Inc. (recently acquired by Alcatel), Avaya, Callogistix of CMR, Inc., Database Systems Corp., and IVR Inc. The communication carrier can be an interexchange carrier (IXC) (e.g., Qwest, AT&T, MCI Worldcom, Sprint) or a local exchange carrier (LEC) (e.g., the baby Bells).